A government minister has rejected a Labour MP’s call for Ticketmaster to be nationalised in the wake of the chaos experienced by thousands of Oasis fans hoping to see the band’s gigs next year.
Tickets for the band’s first tour in 15 years went on sale yesterday and had completely sold out by Saturday night.
But thousands of fans were left frustrated by technical problems which affected the Ticketmaster website and so-called “in demand pricing” which saw the cost of tickets soar to three times their original value.
The chaos led Zarah Sultana, the Labour MP for Coventry South, to post on X: “Nationalise Ticketmaster.”
On Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning, Commons leader Lucy Powell was asked whether she had got Oasis tickets herself and whether she agreed with Sultana.
She said: “I don’t think we need to nationalise Ticketmaster.
“Thankfully, after hours of waiting like many, many other people in a queue, I was able to get a couple of Oasis tickets, but at a bit more than I was hoping to pay for them.”
Ticketmaster has said that the system of in-demand pricing, also known as “dynamic pricing”, is “driven by supply and demand”.
“The goal is to give fans fair and safe access to the best tickets while enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true market value,” the ticketing website said.